Packing in the rest of Thursday, and gettin' screenshot-happy all of a sudden.

Dear ER writers: do you even understand how much I don't care about Tony/Sam at this point? It's over. It's dead. LET IT GO. Of course, since I am 99% positive you are going to drag this out to the bitter end so as to magically spring them back together by series finale time, it's really almost more aggravating to watch them "fight" (i.e. "Sam bitch and moan to everyone she can find") than it was to watch them together.

While you're at it, just drop Neela/Simon. Now. RIGHT NOW. No explanation necessary. Pretend a helicopter fell on him between episodes, if you must. I'm not fussy.

And stop promoting your magical award-winning guest stars. Their storylines are inevitable dull as sin and made of fail. I was far more impressed with the other one, with the little girl, even if her storyline's ending was telegraphed from a mile away.

CSI: Deep Fried & Minty FreshSomeone please, PLEASE caption this for me. There are too many things I want to do with it... Nick fitting right in to the fandom's tendency to slash him. Women's propensity to find slash hot (i.e. Riley cocking her head with interest). The fact that it's RILEY, so I don't entirely trust her not to be wondering if she could join in. Or the fact that it's RAY, who is awesome but maybe a vaguely disturbing choice for hot slashy purposes. My mind is so full of possibilities that I can't form anything concrete, hence why I need your help. If you can't come up with a caption, spread the screenshot on your journals and/or in communities until you find someone who can!

This episode was kind of fun...the giant chicken through the window undeniably so. As was the random fact that Ray can speak Mandarin with some degree of fluency, as befits all cultured professors and/or cranky doctors with a limp and a cane. And my bemusement with wondering how many people hit up Google the next day to find out if you could in fact kill yourself with toothpaste and/or use antihistimines to improve your chances of not throwing up any similar toxic substance you choose to swallow.

I also got really sick of watching Gary drown in oil, and couldn't help but think "Wow, this was so much less graphic on Pushing Daisies." (insert requisite moment of silence)

I'm confused as to how Ray needed an office, though. Did the CSIs used to get their own offices? I'm quite positive Greg didn't get his own office as soon as he passed his training. Did they pass a new code stating it a workplace necessity? Not that I minded him finding a cute little closet by the morgue, it just seemed odd.

I'm also amazed that Super Speshul Precocious RIley ever worked somewhere as mundane as fast food. Unless it was just part of her plan to become independently wealthy by working at the youngest possible age so she could ditch her loser psychologist parents ASAP (I'm sorry, but she's still just SO IRRELEVANT, it kills me. Bounce her ass out already and try again).

Um, I swear there were things I liked. The whole toothpaste "murder" seemed obvious from the start - there are much simpler and less messy ways of poisoning someone - but I still liked watching them work that case, especially when Hodges got to smirk "interrupting arts and crafts" and Greg snark about how squeezing tubes of toothpaste into a container is an experiment, thank you very much.

Brass got some good snarking in, too. Oh, and the part where Nick cheerfully continues to eat the fast-food chicken & fries despite the gruesome murders there he spent all episode working on. Heh.Grey's Anatomy/Private Practice Super Special Hugely Promoted Epic Crossover Event, Week 2Man. Oh, man. After that beautiful, brilliant display of Derek & Addison back on the same screen again, my hatred for Mer/Der just exploded with the power of 1,000 FIERY BURNING SUNS.

I hate them. I hate them, and I have always hated them...well, actually not always, only since Addison made Karev her bitch (in the non-dirty sense) and I realized she was awesome rather than the devil incarnate. The point is! After being exposed to the beauty and wonder of what once was, all of a sudden the fact that Derek's planning to propose to Meredith makes me sick to my stomach right now. I still vote for her being a midlife crisis.

I loved all the little breadcrumbs and scraps and great big honking slices of detail about Derek & Addison's past. He wrote her a song! A hilariously terrible, silly, cheese-tastic song that must have made her spit out her drink from laughing so hard! OMG, Young Derek, you were so dorky. Perhaps adorkable? Apparently you also played guitar, and thus managed to be cute and endearing even with lyrics like Our eyes met over the cadaver / And I knew I had to have her.

Because it also contains the lovely sentiment of such lyrics as And in her eyes I saw my life I knew she would be my wife And she would breathe the life back into me For every day until eternity

To which I briefly say DAMN YOU, DEREK, HOW DID YOU LOSE THAT, before I slip back into my happy bubble of the past and wishing it had never ended; perhaps we can have a miniseries set in the past all about how when Derek and Addison were in love and hung out with Sam and Naomi who were also in love? (screw you, other show; I continue to violently reject that Archer has ever so much as tossed a saucy glance Naomi's way; everyone came to Seattle Grace to support & rally around Addison, that's all!)

Screw you too, Derek's bitchy mother with an anti-rich-people prejudice! (Although I did love hearing about "Hot dog Thanksgiving" and cannot wait to find the excessively long and canon-sounding fic that takes this bare-bones outline and tells it in resplendent detail.)

I may or may not have chosen to pretend that Meredith's voiceover was from Heaven this week, thus allowing Derek and Addison to get back together. Which is not a thing I can be blamed for doing, especially after seeing him, in response to her nigh-hysterical rambles about how she needs to him to save her brother, fix her with this heartwrenching look of sorrow & compassion:

THAT LOOK. That is the kind of look he gives Meredith that makes me ship them! But now he's directing it at Addie! Whom he actually calls "Addie" at one point, and it is the sweetest and most exquisite of all sounds! *whimpers and flails about* Whyyyy can't they be together at this point! Why! Her only sane family is dying in front of her; I need Derek to give her a shoulder to cry on and hold her and promise that he will do everything in his power to save him. (I would wonder about conflict of interest, but I know that's never been a problem on this show)

*beats fists against the floor for a while and loses self in heartbreaking memories of when Addison apologized and he wouldn't give her another chance*

"His eyes are open, he's groggy, but I don't think he's awake because he hasn't tried to kill me yet." Man, the Montgomery-Shepherds had hate issues all over the place, didn't they? Hah! I kind of love it. Hell, I just love anything that allows me to picture this great big network clan surrounding that marriage. So let's see, we've got Mama Shep and a pack of sisters, adoptive brother Mark who sleeps with all the women, prissy Busy, Archer the Ass, and then Sam and Naomi on the side, complete with daughter. Fun times!

"What the hell happened?" Naomi asks, bemoaning how they all thought their marriages were going to last forever, and my answer is GOOD QUESTION. In sum, Shonda and her giant Happiness Eraser happened, and look, I know none of this even existed without the pencil end of that eraser, but it doesn't make me ANY LESS BITTER. Everyone should have lasted forever! Damn you, McSleazy. So as far as I'm concerned, Sam and Naomi are still married and right now, Meredith is an insignificant little gnat.

Speaking of Naomi, the bit where she got brushed aside because only Callie was magical enough to run after & comfort her best pal Addie? Kind of made my lip twitch. There was a long list of reasons I was overjoyed when Addison got her own spinoff, but the end of the unholy friendship with Callie was one of my favorites. Incidentally, since I was sure Cal wouldn't be able to make it a full two hours without asking for Addison's advice on how to be a lesbian, I skipped all of their scenes without hesitation.

Other things on that list where "dear God yay an end to Mark/Addison interaction," so I avoided that too, although I did not avoid spitting out my hot cocoa when she snarked "We call Meredith the 12-year-old; what do you call Lexie, the preschooler?"

Of course, my very favorite thing on that list was "DEAR GOD YAY DERAILING ADDISON/ALEX," so you can imagine my displeasure with them so much as sharing a single conversation. It didn't help that it was a terribly depressing conversation wherein Addison couldn't admit that she was happy. She breaks my heart sometimes, I so badly want good things for her even though nothing ever goes right (except her job, where she is God and saves babies nobody should be able to). I think that's part of my bitterness over the pending MerDer proposal too. I know she broke the first marriage, but Derek let it break. I at least want her to have a good prospect before he gets settled into Love Of My Life, Round II.

Man, my MerDer bitterness seems to know no bounds. Way to kill the engagement squee I otherwise would have indulged in, show. At this point I think she's going to have be rescued unconscious from a housefire with Derek weeping over her comatose body for another 3-episode-arc before I'm able to emotionally invest in them again. Or perhaps experience massive internal & external trauma when a drunk driver slams into her side of the car. Ectopic pregnancy would work too, if only you hadn't squandered that on Cristina. I suppose there are always miscarriages.

Oh, oh, and back to Naomi and Sam's marriage - what the hell, they are not "way over." They were still sleeping together with feelings of romantic attachment in October! In other words, it wasn't over; it still isn't over, and I will bust out more quotes from "The Notebook" if that's what it takes! It did my heart sooooo many worlds of good to see her standing in the room with him at the end. Where one's wife should be.

Of course, I have to admit that if there was one benefit to admitted they were divorced, it was the hilarity of watching Bailey arch her eyebrows and snark at him about how in the world Naomi went from him to Archer. And/or anything and everything else she said, verbally or with her eyebrows, to imply that he's an idiot. I can't even remember all the specifics, except that it was nearly as much fun as the first time Addison came in to tell him he was an idiot for divorcing Naomi, and punctuated her sentence with slaps to the head.

Oh, and as for Archer's ultimate fate...apparently he's okay now? Without a hitch? Frak. All I have to say to that is, if they let him live and kill off the cute pregnant lady with the sweet husband who've both already been through hell, someone is going to pay.

There is so much more I want to write about the beauty of Derek and Addison's scenes together, but I have so much other stuff to mention that I'm afraid that angle has been cut for time.

Random LOLs: -"I always liked Addison. I don't always like everyone, but I liked her. She smells nice, she's polite, and she saves babies. So what happened to the brother? Was he lost at birth? Raised by wolves?" I asked myself the same questions, Bailey. But you phrased them much better.

-Addison trying to pray and not knowing how because she's a WASP, and they only go to church at Christmas. XD

Um, and then some other stuff happened tooLike first of all, opening song? *flails about madly* It took me few lines to recognize it, though it sounded familiar, and then it was OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD, "Emily" by Keri Noble! This was one of the songs I found in '07 and I hunted ALL OVER THE INTERNET to find a copy of and couldn't, but maybe now that it's been featured on this show...squee! I has good musical taste! I've always loved the lyrics on that song so much, and surprisingly, once again Izzie's brain condition can be beautifully illustrated through song.

Somebody tell her she can't carry it allIt's getting hard to pretend we're not watching her fall...(and also, the entire rest of the lyrics, seriously)

And that's all we're going to say about Izzie, because while her game was half-fun (residents sighing and pulling cards out of their pockets!) and half-heartbreaking (oh, honey, why such manic denial?), the slo-mo intern race to the finish line was the dumbest effing thing this show has done in weeks. Honestly, I think half my problem with it was watching the Chief whoop and cheer them on like he was 10 instead of, um, the very important guy in charge of the hospital.

Ohhhh, George. You can't leave me! (and recent news says maybe you weren't!) I love you when you're not tangled in messy love affairs and thus have time to be sweet and patient, offering extra help to struggling interns...and then getting ANGRY and DETERMINED at their dangerous refusal to admit they're struggling. Ooh. That was actually kind of hot.

BONUS: Sadie's actually-not-as-aggravating-as-feared, in-the-wake-of-Dixon-and-Arizona ass is bounced out of here for good! And I maybe laughed a lot at her genuine puzzlement that after cheating her way into the program, Meredith wouldn't routinely help her out during the real-life part of the program.

DOUBLE BONUS: I get more ammunition for my "Mer's a nasty skank" cannon - they slept their way through Europe? Seriously? That is just...that is icky, on so many levels I can't calculate them. Age is not an excuse. I despise girls who think it's okay to be wild and carefree in college as long as they straighten up afterwards. Nobody needs a period of being wild and stupid.

In other news, excellent! Just when I was starting to fear I might be running out of steam with which to hate Owen, I get to add "breaker of schoolteacher hearts" to his fine list of accomplishments that so far includes assault-kissing and stabbing defenseless pigs for sport. Yeah, I heard his explanation. Yeah, I saw his sad face and yearning to do the right thing while causing as little pain as possible. But since I saw him kill pigs, nope, I'm not in a forgiving mood. (seeing Derek's POV for leaving...I'm getting th -- nope, I will never be there).

I'm going to hold it against him that he broke that poor girl's heart when she was clearly never anything but devoted and loyal. And yes, there's a tiny part of me that admits she was perhaps a little too young and naive, and they don't seem like the most ideal match in the long run, and ultimately it's probably better this way, but I CAN'T ADMIT IT.

Incidentally, I'm starting to get frustrated by my inability to do this. Dammit, Shonda, you're doing a really good job of testing my limits...but I can't back down! I've got principles! I specifically stated my refusal to succumb to your master plan to mold him into a likable character!

And the other stuff happened in CaliforniaI'm not even trying to watch scenes with Charlotte in them anymore. I have no idea what's going on in that storyline, because with the power of my skip-forward button, as soon as I see blonde hair, with one click I'm somewhere in the next scene. I like to picture her with smoke curling from her nostrils, banging on the edges of my mental screen and trying to get a word in, while I smile demeurely and do things like take screenshots which I then crop her out of, like so.

(This needs to be the natural way of things, for real. From now on, every time I get mad, or frustrated, or upset with the stupid love/baby pentagon, I'm going to stare at this picture and go to my happy place).

So, when I'm not imaginatively inventing delightful stories between Cooper and Violet such as how we have a grown-up Secret Life of the American Teenager situation in our hands and Cooper loves the unborn like his own with plans to be its stepfather, I do have a spare bit of empathy left over for Pete's frustration that she won't let him be involved at all. I know he might not even be the father - side note, I appreciated the lack of Sheldon! - but come on, he's offering quite insistently, and I really think it could only be a good thing!

You don't have to fall in love with Pete, Violet, although that would be a really helpful temporary situation until we can shoot the Wicked Witch of the South dead, but at least let him support you in any way he can. You know that at the very least, he'll probably end up acting as another random uncle.

...yep, that's all I have to say as far as what happened in California, other than I'm glad they didn't call social services or the police on the post-partum psychosis mother, because sometimes I think people underestimate just how maddening the sound of crying babies can be. That was a joke shut up leave me alone. And she had sleep-loss-induced insanity to excuse her - or more to the point, a conscience that immediately stopped her before she actually hurt said baby, followed by several tons' worth of remorse. Her husband didn't even divorce her on the spot! I love happy endings like that.

...and then it's like wait, what, apparently the epic crossover event STILL isn't over? Really? Still? Sweet Lord. I'm secretly quite excited about this because I am having tons of fun.